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Pestiferous

adjective
1.
Contaminated with infecting organisms.  Synonym: dirty.  "Obliged to go into infected rooms"
2.
Likely to spread and cause an epidemic disease.  Synonyms: pestilent, pestilential, plaguey.  "Plaguey fevers"
3.
Tending to corrupt or pervert.  Synonyms: corruptive, perversive.
4.
Causing irritation or annoyance.  Synonyms: annoying, bothersome, galling, irritating, nettlesome, pesky, pestering, plaguey, plaguy, teasing, vexatious, vexing.  "Aircraft noise is particularly bothersome near the airport" , "Found it galling to have to ask permission" , "An irritating delay" , "Nettlesome paperwork" , "A pesky mosquito" , "Swarms of pestering gnats" , "A plaguey newfangled safety catch" , "A teasing and persistent thought annoyed him" , "A vexatious child" , "It is vexing to have to admit you are wrong"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Pestiferous" Quotes from Famous Books



... through the malicious suggestion of our gostly enemy, partly by the yvell and perverse inclination and sedicious disposition of sundry persons, divers heresies and erronio[us] [o]pinions have ben late sowen and spredde amonge his subjectes of this his said realme, by blasphemous and pestiferous englishe bokes, printed in other regions and sent into this realme, to the entent as well to perverte and withdrawe the people from the catholike and true fayth of Christe, as also to stirre and incense them to sedition and disobedience agaynst ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 183, April 30, 1853 • Various

... you call it—of being arrant asses," retorted the doctor, "and not having sense enough to know honest air from poison, and the dry land from a vile, pestiferous slough. I think it most probable—though, of course, it's only an opinion—that you'll all have the deuce to pay before you get that malaria out of your systems. Camp in a bog, would you? Silver, I'm surprised at you. You're less ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... sudden turn toward the bottom of the wide depression as though it wearied of dodging rocks and preferred the loose sand below. Of his own accord Rabbit broke into a steady lope, flinging his head sidewise now and then to discourage the pestiferous gnats that swarmed about his ears. Starr, also driven to action of some kind, began to fling his hands in long sweeping gestures past his face. He hoped that the cabin, being on a higher bit of ground, would ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... low strip of alluvial soil. It was a solitary, a melancholy scene. A luxuriant growth of reeds fringes the margin of the lagoon, and heat and moisture combine to throw up a rank vegetation on its marshy banks. The peasants fly from its pestiferous exhalations, and nothing is heard or seen but the plash of the fish in the still waters, the sharp cry of the heron and gull, wheeling and hovering till they dart on their prey, and some rude fisherman's boat piled with baskets of eels ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... the Venetian architecture must have been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible: even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without setting foot upon the lower ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... everybody has seen Rip Van Winkle, and everybody has expressed the same unbounded admiration of Mr. JEFFERSON'S matchless genius. But the world never has been, and doubtless never will be, without the pestiferous presence of Reformers, Men of Progress, Earnest Men, who insist upon improving everything after their own fashion, and who are unhappy because they did not have the opportunity of making the solar year consist of an even number of days, and because they were ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II. No. 38, Saturday, December 17, 1870. • Various

... get away," said one of these, James Eliot by name, to the prince; "and hope that your Highness will soon leave this pestiferous Spain. It is a dangerous place to alter a man and turn him. I myself in a short time have perceived my own weakness, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... hands of an English unit. Before they were there it was a Serbian hospital, and the staff threw all the dirty, stained dressings over the cliff, down which they rolled to the road. The peasants used to collect these pestiferous morsels and made them into padded quilts. Little wonder that illness spread! In the summer Lady Paget's hospital withdrew to some great barracks on the hill. The paths were made of Turkish tombstones, which were always used in Uskub for ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... the far sky told that a yet larger centre of industry lurked beyond the horizon. Dunfield offered no prominent features save the chimneys of its factories and its fine church, the spire of which rose high above surrounding buildings; over all hung a canopy of foul vapour, heavy, pestiferous. Take in your fingers a spray from one of the trees even here on the Heath, and ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... and published in many different languages and sold at such low prices that the poor could have access to it, and within a short time millions of Bibles were in the hands of the people. The Papal system denounced these Bible societies as "pestiferous Bible societies". The time had come, however, for an increase of knowledge and the Lord was fulfilling his promise by putting it within the reach of those who were hungry for truth. The people began to learn that God is no respecter of persons; that kings and ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford

... said the priest, putting his hand on the captain's arm; "remember that the means sanctifies the end. We can allow no Calvinists to exist, either here or abroad. They would be continually coming back with their pestiferous doctrines, or, finding themselves in the majority, would speedily put an end to our holy Church. They must be extirpated, root ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston

... fellowes pretend to be witty; for understandinge, so manye have lost there witts as ... they have fisht for it and in som drawenett or other have caught it. But where might these lost shrewes bee? I suspect this pestiferous Je vous prie hathe putt some slovenly tricke or other to cheate my mayster boathe ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen

... in huge cities and smothering manufactories the numbers which should be spread over the face of a country; and what wonder that they should be corrupted? We have turned healthful and pleasant brooks into morasses and pestiferous lakes,—what wonder the soil should be unhealthy? A great deal, I think, might be done by executing the punishment of death, without a chance of escape, in all cases to which it should be found properly applicable; of course ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... tales of Bob's drunken freaks had given her cause to think somewhat seriously, and she feared an unpleasant encounter. More than once she had witnessed quarrels in the alleyway behind the Circuit, where pestiferous youths of Wharton's ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach

... his chamber was poverty-stricken, but as his poverty was noble, his garret was neat. The den upon which his eye now rested was abject, dirty, fetid, pestiferous, mean, sordid. The only furniture consisted of a straw chair, an infirm table, some old bits of crockery, and in two of the corners, two indescribable pallets; all the light was furnished by a dormer window of four panes, draped with spiders' webs. Through this aperture there penetrated just ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... to you for eight thousand; he pockets one thousand and with the other seven your money-grabbing, pestiferous old granddad is paid off. Then you and I frame ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... one ever hear such a pestiferous child!" said Mr. Button, laughing as he spoke. "His questions and his tongue run like ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay

... bears 'round here," announced Jed Wallop. "But you might strike something jest as bad, especially if the snow keeps on gittin' deeper. The wolves in this neighborhood git mighty pestiferous when they ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)

... in myself, I mind me how very pitiful you are all by nature, so often do I recognize that this present work will, to your thinking, have a grievous and a weariful beginning, inasmuch as the dolorous remembrance of the late pestiferous mortality, which it beareth on its forefront, is universally irksome to all who saw or otherwise knew it. But I would not therefore have this affright you from reading further, as if in the reading you were still to fare among ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... clearly acknowledge that he is a very undesirable citizen. I write the above sentence to show that I realize the whole duty of the bird-lover in the matter of the sparrow. This pestiferous creature should be exterminated by traps, by grain soaked in alcohol, or strychnia, by fair means or foul. But personally, I am taking no share in his destruction. Any bird-lover, after reading the foregoing account, can scarcely have ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... A new disease! I know not, new or old, But it may well be call'd poor mortals' Plague; For like a pestilence it doth infect The houses of the brain: first it begins Solely to work upon the phantasy, Filling her seat with such pestiferous air, As soon corrupts the judgment, and from thence, Sends like contagion to the memory, Still each of other catching the infection, Which as a searching vapour spreads itself Confusedly through every ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson

... animal life Porto Rico has little. No poisonous serpents are found, but pestiferous insects, such as tarantulas, centipedes, scorpions, ticks, fleas, and mosquitos, supply this deficiency in a measure. All sorts of domestic animals are raised, and the excellent pasture-lands support large herds of cattle for export and home consumption, and ponies, whose ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... dwellings, a police station of dilapidated thatch among the trees, close to it a cage in which there is a half-human looking criminal lying on a mat, a new house or big room, raised for Mr. Hawley, with the swamp all round it and underneath it, and close to it some pestiferous ditches which have been cut to drain it, but in which a putrid-looking brown ooze has stagnated. There is a causeway about two hundred yards long on the river bank, but no road anywhere. The river is broad, deep, swift and muddy; on its opposite side is Perak, the finest State in the ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)

... age, when the French King rode in all honour, albeit a prisoner, at his conqueror's side; or later, when fallen Richard, shorn of all royal dignity, rode abject and forlorn through the city, and caps were flung up for his usurping cousin. But oh, the horror of closed shops and deserted houses, and pestiferous wretches running by the coach door in their poisonous rags, begging alms, whenever the horses went slowly, in those narrow streets that lay between Fareham ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... show the pleasure she experienced in this delightful pain." These spiritual and divine emotions are neither known nor relished by profane minds and hearts, who only learn from their own corruption, and from the pestiferous books which encourage it, the extravagances and transports of criminal love; but pure minds, who know what it is to love God, and to be loved by Him, are not astonished at the effects which this holy reciprocated love produced in a St. Francis, in a St. Theresa, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe

... and maintenance of the Tribunate. Cicero defends its utility, giving, with considerable wit, the task of attacking it to his brother Quintus. Quintus, indeed, is very violent in his onslaught. What can be more "pestiferous," or more prone to sedition? Then Cicero puts him down. "O Quintus," he says, "you see clearly the vices of the Tribunate! but can there be anything more unjust than, in discussing a matter, to remember all its ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... These were the pestiferous principles of the intermeddlers, who disturbed the tranquillity of Ribblesdale, and alienated the minds of the people from their good pastor. The doctrine of Davies was most popular, for Morgan cut only the fifth commandment and its ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... didn't think I expected this great, big, low-roofed market to have paws and growl, did you," says I. "I would growl if the city were to set me down in the mud of this pestiferous place. So you thought I really meant it. Well, the easy way in which some men are taken in is astonishing. They never can understand metaphor," says I. "But the bivalves and Rockaways. What of ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens

... had agreed to do this, I had a long and agreeable conversation with the General, who spoke of the Puritans with intense disgust, and of the first importation of them as "that pestiferous crew of the Mayflower;" but he is by no means rancorous against individual Yankees. He spoke very favourably of M'Clellan, whom he knew to be a gentleman, clever, and personally brave, though he might lack moral courage to face responsibility. Magruder had commanded the Confederate ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle

... good, though up to that time the members of the household had supposed they were poisonous. After a few more bites of the morning meal the birds went all around the house, inspecting every nook and crevice. But they found every place fully occupied by the pestiferous English sparrows, who darted at them maliciously. For two whole days the blue birds stayed around the lawn and garden, but the sparrows made their lives miserable and finally they went to the timber an eighth of a mile away ...
— Some Spring Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell

... think,' said Major de Blacquaire, 'that I have ever encountered quite so pestiferous a ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray

... expostulated with her on her rashness, but all in vain. I told her to send them as much wine and jellies as she pleased, but to keep out of these pestiferous cottages. She only looked at me with those big ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming

... pace, one day on a sand- bank, another with the machinery out of order, continually halting for supplies of wood, and thinking a couple of miles a good day's work. Captain Wilson, shocked at the notion of women spending weeks in labouring up that pestiferous stream, beset with mosquitoes by night and tsetse flies by day, offered to man his gig and take them up himself. So desperate a journey was it for a frail invalid like Miss Mackenzie, that one of the sailors took a spade to dig her grave with; and in fact she was soon ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... curative value of cow-pox over small-pox, so the peasant women of Poland had learned that the annoying skin disease from which they suffered was caused by an almost invisible insect, and, furthermore, had acquired the trick of dislodging the pestiferous little creature with the point of a needle. From them a youth of the country, F. Renucci by name, learned the open secret. He conveyed it to Paris when he went there to study medicine, and in 1834 demonstrated it ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... I am a beast, a reptile, and know nothing! From the cave of my ignorance, amid the fogs of my dulness, and pestilential fumes of my political heresies, I look up to thee, as doth a toad through the iron-barred lucerne of a pestiferous dungeon, to the cloudless glory of a summer sun! Sorely sighing in bitterness of soul, I say, when shall my name be the quotation of the wise, and my countenance be the delight of the godly, like the illustrious lord of Laggan's many hills? As for him, his works are perfect: never ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... Slaves were regarded as chattels. No one objected to slavery as wrong. Slaves were better treated at Athens than elsewhere, but even at Athens they were tortured when their testimony was required. They were let out, sometimes by thousands, to work in pestiferous mines. (5) Women and Children. In Athens, the wife had seldom learned any thing but to spin and to cook. She lived in seclusion in her dwelling, and was not present with her husband at social entertainments, either at home or elsewhere. She had ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... at this pestiferous old slaughter-house,' said that gentleman, poising himself on one leg, and shaking the other in an ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens

... heat of the battle, distinguished by their country and covered with her applause. Every soul sensible to honor, envies rather than compassionates their fate. It was in the dungeons of our inhuman invaders; it was in the loathsome and pestiferous prisons, that the wretchedness of our countrymen still makes the heart bleed. It was there that hunger, and thirst, and disease, and all the contumely that cold-hearted cruelty could bestow, sharpened every pang of death. Misery there wrung ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... a doughty old giant with a long bad record for troubling pilgrims. He is not, they say, so dangerous to life as are some of the other giants, as he rarely slays a pilgrim; but for inflicting torment on them and as a helper to Giant Discourager no one can equal him. He is a most pestiferous giant, ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry

... miner,—sufficiently competent, indeed, to afford him guidance and comfort during the ordinary perils of his labour, but certain to be extinguished should he encounter the more formidable hazard of earth-damps or pestiferous vapours. It was now, however, once more rekindled, and with a throbbing mixture of hope, awe, and anxiety, Waverley watched the group before him, as those who had just arrived snatched a hasty meal, and the others assumed their arms, and made ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... and Erech, which recent American excavations have proved to be the site of Udab (also called Adab and Usab) and the neighbouring F[a]ra, the site of the ancient Kisurra. The dense population was due to the elaborate irrigation of the Babylonian plain which had originally reclaimed it from a pestiferous and uninhabitable swamp and had made it the most fertile country in the world. The science of irrigation and engineering seems to have been first created in Babylonia, which was covered by a network of canals, all skilfully planned and regulated. The three chief ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... all of one piece bound over the foot, and a short, large-bore musket, completed the hunter's grotesque outfit. Often he carried wound about his waist a sack of netting into which he crawled at night to keep off the pestiferous mosquitoes. With creditable regularity he and his apprentices arose early in the morning and started on foot for the hunt, eating no food until they had killed and skinned as many wild cattle or swine as there were persons in the company. After having ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring

... air of the little valley, which four days ago was smiling with all the health of nature and the contentment of industrious man, is waxing pestiferous with the awful odor of decaying human bodies. Buzzards, invited by their disgusting instinct, gather for a promised feast, and sit and glower on neighboring perches or else circle round and round in the blue empyrean over the location of unfriended ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... rage. We may do well therefore to put this in our procession amongst the rest; "From all blindness of heart, from pride, vainglory, and hypocrisy, from envy, hatred and malice, anger, and all such pestiferous perturbations, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... destruction of Tyndale's English bible, with all the controversial works on both sides of which it had been the fertile parent, an injunction that "the kingdom should be purged and cleansed of all religious plays, interludes, rhymes, ballads, and songs, which are equally pestiferous and noisome to the peace of the church." During the reign of Edward, when the papists had availed themselves of the license of the theatre to attack Cranmer and the protector, a similar prohibition was issued against all dramatic performances, as tending to the growth ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... ground beneath him before advancing, having but narrowly escaped from being swallowed up and buried beneath one of those smiling plains which he could hear cracking at each step he took. The giant grass, nourished by all the collected humus, concealed pestiferous marshes, depths of liquid mud; and amongst the expanses of verdure spread over the glaucous immensity to the very horizon there were only narrow stretches of firm ground with which the traveller must be acquainted if he would avoid disappearing for ever. One night the man sank down as far as his ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... I reckon," said Leary a little pathetically, the reference being presumably to the pestiferous police. "That was a good idea of yours for me to go up into Canada and work at a real job for a while. Must a worked hard enough to change my finger prints. Some bloke died in Kansas awhile back and got all the credit for being the ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... a box in which some mounted moths had been sent me by a friend in Louisiana, and when I went to examine my cocoons toward spring, to my horror I found the contents of the box chopped to pieces and totally destroyed. Pestiferous little 'clothes' moths must have infested the box, for there were none elsewhere in the Cabin. For a while this appeared to be too bad luck; but when luck turns squarely against you, that is the time to test the essence and quality of the word ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter

... song always seemed to please everybody except the gnat. The fairies appeared to regard the gnat as a pestiferous insect, but a contemptuous pity led them to call upon him for a recitation, which invariably ...
— The Holy Cross and Other Tales • Eugene Field

... for our homes and our inheritance, and for the oppressed, is elevating, purifying. War is terrible in itself, and in some of its consequences, but there is a bow on the cloud. When the bolt has spent itself in the pestiferous air, all nature is bright and glorious. With true discipline, soldiers are made vigorous in body; they are also quickened in mind by the tactics and incitements of warfare, they are ennobled by high motives, and may leave the campaign better than when they entered it. Courage ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams

... rose shrill above the thunder of the cannon. Her flag was struck, but to this the American gunners paid no heed. The repeated treachery of the corsairs had left in the minds of the Yankee sailors but one thought,—to send the ship to the bottom, and rid the ocean of so pestiferous ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... practice of it is so easy and lazy and uppish that it is very common, but its cry is drowned by a louder and more sincere one. We who do not want to know, also do not want to go blind, to go mad, to be disfigured, to be barren, to become pestiferous, or to see such things happening to our children. We learn, at last, that the majority of the victims are not the people of whom we so glibly say, 'Serve them right,' but quite innocent children and innocent parents, smitten by a contagion which, no matter ...
— Safe Marriage - A Return to Sanity • Ettie A. Rout

... indicted the Morrisites made a presentment to Judge Kinney, in which they said, "We present his Excellency Stephen S. Harding, governor of Utah, as we would an unsafe bridge over a dangerous stream, jeopardizing the lives of all those who pass over it; or as we would a pestiferous cesspool in our district, breathing disease and death." And the chief justice assured this jury that they addressed him "in no spirit of malice," and asked them to accept his thanks "for your cooperation in the support of my efforts to maintain and enforce ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... my duty with all speed to ascertain your good lordship of all the premises; that in time your lordship may advertise my lord his Grace, and my lord of London. It will be a gracious deed that he and all his pestiferous works, which he carrieth about, might be taken, to the salvation of his soul, opening of many privy heresies, and extinction of ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude

... conduct of the Russian, French, and German soldiers do not bear publication. But what it broadly amounts to is the treatment of a venerable civilisation absolutely foreign to our own as if its members belonged to a low class of pestiferous beasts whose most desirable fate would ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... pestiferous for whites in the whole world. The coast of Africa, which enjoys a dreadful reputation in this way, is not so deadly in its climate as is Chagres. The thermometer ranges from 78 deg. to 85 deg. all the year, and it rains every day. Many ...
— The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California • Brevet Col. J.C. Fremont

... alighting in the same place as before, and crying out, "Ho-ho! hah-hah!" At this rate, thought Prince Violet, I shall never get to the end of my journey. Still he repeated his blows, at each one of which the pestiferous little imp only jumped higher and laughed louder, and the gallant steed only snorted, pawed, and stamped more vehemently, until both steed and master became quite exhausted. The latter then resorted to artifice, seeing ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various

... they were intended had lost her master and both mates by sickness, and the merchant therefore sold them to me. We had not altogether escaped, and several of our men who were perfectly healthy when we entered the harbour fell victims to the fever engendered by the pestiferous climate. We were compelled to fill up their places with others, who afterwards gave us ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... about to be transplanted to a better world, if there is such a place. She is too good and pure for this cursed, pestiferous earth." ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... regions there are fissures in the rocks exhaling pestiferous emanations; these are the spiracula, the breathing-holes, of the dragon within. The dragon legends of Naples and Mondragone are probably of this origin, and so is that of the Roman Campagna (1660) where the dragon-killer died from the effects ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... both to quench thirst and to preserve health, viz., coffee; but as on a march or out shooting you cannot always stop to have a fire lit, the next best drink is a little weak brandy and water, which you should carry from where you start in the morning, as the water of the rivers is pestiferous. To avoid fever or malaria, I would always take a small quantity of bark of quinine. During the time I was in Africa I enjoyed most excellent health, as I believe everybody may who takes ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... last had to force one from the governor by my importunities. I collected wine and cordials, and whatever could be of service, and after his first outburst my young brother-in-law helped me in a way I can never forget. No doubt the pestiferous air caused by the horrible carnage of Freiburg had poisoned the wound. As soon as possible my husband was removed; but the mischief had been already done; the wound was in a bad state, fever had set in, and though he struggled on stage after stage, declaring ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Pervade penetri. Perverse obstina, kontrauxa. Pervert malkonverti, malverigi. Perversion malkonverto, malverigo, malverigxo. Pervious penetrebla. Pest pesto. Pester enui, turmenteti. Pestiferous pesta. Pestilence pesto. Pestilential pesta, pestiga. Pestle pistilo. Pet dorloti. Petal florfolieto. Petard petardo. Petition petegi. Petition petskribo. Petrify sxtonigi. Petroleum petrolo. Petticoat subjupo. Pettish ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... a few conscienceless publishers, and by a certain class of unscrupulous agents, that buyers have become wary, not to say weary, of being made the victims of their deceptive inventions. It is indeed lamentable that a few such pestiferous schemers should thus bring a certain degree of reproach upon the entire publishing business. It is a common practice among these soi-disant publishers—many of whom possess neither capital, credit, ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper

... strengthened its fortifications, to resist, as he said, the threatened attacks of Duke Eric of Brunswick and his German mercenaries. A printing-press was established in the place, whence satirical pamphlets, hymn-books, and other pestiferous productions, were constantly issuing to the annoyance of government. Many lawless and uproarious individuals enjoyed the Count's hospitality. All the dregs and filth of the provinces, according to Doctor Viglius, were accumulated at Viane as in a cesspool. Along the placid banks of the Lech, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... hope—I hope you may be right. For I assure you that the horror I then conceived for those pale botanical specimens in their pestiferous and increscent abundance, exceeded what words can describe. I have felt spiritually devastated ever since, as though some vast calamity were about to fall not only on my own intellect, but on that of my country. ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman

... men; but saddles being emptied, they recoiled, and their leader being slain, whilst attempting to rally them, they fled contemptibly,—seven or eight from one. However, this is only my revenge for much exasperation and deploration that they would never come away from their pestiferous walls,—where, after all, they had a right to stay, and will not be blamed by the candid and unbebullet-whizzed reader ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... raised for bread. In every hovel we entered, we found the dying or the dead. In one of these straw-roofed burrows, eight persons had died in the last fortnight, and five more were lying upon the fetid, pestiferous straw, upon which their predecessors to the grave had been consumed by the wasting fever of famine. In scarcely a single one of these most inhuman habitations was there the slightest indication of food of any kind to be found, nor fuel to cook food, nor any thing resembling a bed, unless it were ...
— A Journal of a Visit of Three Days to Skibbereen, and its Neighbourhood • Elihu Burritt

... hours after noon, and though to the Fair Strangers it seemed they had travelled more than forty or a hundred miles, they were apparently no nearer than ever to the heart of the labyrinth: and this from the first had been the pestiferous peculiarity of that malignantly meandering maze. So they dismounted, and tied Enbarr to the branch of a tree, while they refreshed themselves with a mouthful of Toma's loaf; and Finola now put her thumb under her 'tooth of knowledge,' for she wished new guidance and inspiration, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... archepiscopal see of Turin, so displeasing to the Quirinal, and disapproved of the secret intrigues with the Italian Government. According to their leader, who was the very eminent personage Donna Rosetta now proposed calling upon, other measures should be adopted to liberate the Holy Father from the pestiferous influence of a rationalist varnished over with mysticism. These things Donna Rosetta had learned from the Abbe Marinier, who smiled knowingly about them in her salon. It was inconceivable how many poisonous accusations were being sown broadcast with ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... hand. They ascended steeply, bordered on each side by long, contiguous walls of high houses, and from the time of their first being built, could never have had a gleam of sunshine in them,—always in shadow, always unutterably nasty, and often pestiferous. The nastiness which I saw in Marseilles exceeds my heretofore experience. There is dirt in the hotel, and everywhere else; and it evidently troubles nobody,—no more than if all the people were pigs in a pigsty. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... that glorious victory which had so astonished the world. On the contrary, all the scandalous insinuations, and licentious remarks, with which the Jacobinical foreign journalists had filled their pestiferous pages, relative to our hero and his friends in Italy, and which had found their way into the most thoughtless and depraved of our own newspapers, were preserved for his lordship's immediate amusement. Without introducing the reader behind the sacred ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison

... Adj.; nonnaturals[obs3]; plague spot; malaria &c. (poison) 663; death in the pot, contagion; toxicity. Adj. insalubrious; unhealthy, unwholesome; noxious, noisome; morbific[obs3], morbiferous[obs3]; mephitic, septic, azotic[obs3], deleterious; pestilent, pestiferous, pestilential; virulent, venomous, envenomed; poisonous, toxic, toxiferous[obs3], teratogenic; narcotic. contagious, infectious, catching, taking, epidemic, zymotic[obs3]; epizootic. innutritious[obs3], indigestible, ungenial; uncongenial &c. (disagreeing) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... people. A few of them, doubtless, are sincere and are seeking after communion with God. But the vast majority are lazy and rotten to the core. Their life is known to be utterly worthless, and they are morally pestiferous in their influence upon the whole community. And yet the people accept them as the highest types of piety in the land. Even the poorest among them would give his last morsel to these worthless men. There are, indeed, very few in the community who would dare to refuse ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones

... Belgravia and Bethnal Green or St. Giles's. The people who live in the lower town are principally employed on the wharfs, and in the lumber trade. But my readers will, not thank me for detaining them in a pestiferous atmosphere, among such unpleasing scenes; we will therefore ascend into the High-street of the city, resplendent with gorgeous mercers' stores, and articles of luxury of every description. This street ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... he hath been sick. Derby gaol is a pestiferous place. They are waiting, I suppose, till he is well enough to go publicly, that all the world ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson

... drowned in the rushing waters, many were borne to the other side and continued their journey. In some cases, where the current was not strong, a sort of living bridge was formed, over which immense numbers of these pestiferous insects passed in safety and dry shod. Nothing seemed to check their progress ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... those names which are often ridiculed by the ignorant. For he will be more properly called king than Tarquin, who was able to govern neither himself nor his family; he will deserve to be called the master of the people more than Sylla, who was only the master of three pestiferous vices, luxury, avarice, and cruelty; he will be called rich more properly than Crassus, who would never have desired to cross the Euphrates without any legitimate cause for war, if he had not been in want of something. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... the houses infested by robbers and marauders. Some incidents reported of this plague are ghastly in their horror. The infected were treated with inhuman barbarity, and retorted with savage fury, battering their assailants with the pestiferous ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... invasion of small water animals. It reminded me of the mosquito netting as a safe-guard against flies and other insects in our world. But the mosquito baffles our genius, for he seems to be able to get through as small an opening as air can. Likewise, the pestiferous water animals seem to invade the homes of Stazza, notwithstanding all efforts ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... of war, boy," replied the other, folding the note and placing it in a pouch inside the breast of his flannel shirt. "It seems that that pestiferous British frigate the Talisman, lies at anchor in the bay, on the other ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... suffused the heavens. An appalling stillness pervaded nature; even the insects were silent. For the first time in his pilgrimage, a feeling of deep despondency fell over the soul of Alroy. His energy appeared suddenly to have deserted him. A low hot wind began to rise, and fan his cheek with pestiferous kisses, and enervate his frame with its poisonous embrace. His head and limbs ached with a dull sensation, more terrible than pain; his sight was dizzy, his tongue swollen. Vainly he looked around for ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... though in fulfilment of his threat, Quentin sprang in, and looking hastily round, cried, as if in towering wrath, "Whaur are they? Whaur are thae pestiferous rebels?" ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne

... his Laws esteems nothing of more pestiferous consequence to his city than to give young men the liberty of introducing any change in their habits, gestures, dances, songs, and exercises, from one form to another; shifting from this to that, hunting after novelties, and applauding the inventors; by which means manners are ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... two or three splendid crops during the same year reward the industry of the husbandman. But even in the plain of Damascus the land is cultivated for only a few miles beyond the gates of the city. The water that would fertilize the whole plain flows uselessly into pestiferous marshes, and the wide plain within sight of the Damascus garrison is abandoned to the Bedawin of the Desert and the wild boars ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... energetically. "If I had my way, the pestiferous things should never come near my house. I totally condemn them. I don't see how any consistent Christian can suffer them. They're a pack of ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott

... that the pestiferous air of Batavia began to show itself; for the vessel had not been five days at sea before six men were taken ill with the putrid fever; and very soon afterwards, the captain, his two mates, and all the ...
— An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island • John Hunter

... had no milk for the baby; it had to be fed with a bottle. It would cry for hours without stopping. And as soon as it was quiet, its clothes had to be washed or its bath prepared, or Gertrude wanted something, or one of the pestiferous visitors came in. Eleanore had to lay her work aside; in the evening she would fall across the bed and sleep with painful soundness for an hour or two. If the baby did not wake her by its hungry howling, the bad air did. Her head ached. Yet she concealed her weakness, her longing, ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann

... Topsail Island, but those pestiferous kids are going there, I hear. However, there are plenty of other islands right inside the Upper Inlet. What's the matter with our taking ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson

... dog's tongue good for medicine, and a horse's tongue pestiferous? A. By reason of some secret property, or that the tongue of a dog is full of pores, and so doth draw and take away the viscosity of the wound. It is observed that a dog hath some humour in his tongue, with which, ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous

... which would have crushed Virginia at another time, and which, even in the intense excitement of the moment, had been an added stab to Mrs. Pendleton, was brushed aside as if it were the pestiferous ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... which grieved him. Some other affair of his was yet unsettled—an affair which tortured him and required his attention. In his imagination rose the gloomy scenes of the hundreds and thousands of human beings pent up in the pestiferous air. The laughter of the prisoners resounded in his ears. He saw again among the dead bodies the beautiful, angry, waxen face of the dead Kryltzoff; and the question whether he was mad, or all those who commit those evils and think ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... shall, though. Oh, Artie, my pure-souled youth, let us tell our darling Reggie about Pestiferous Stinkadores." ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... discovered for this often pestiferous weed with which nature carpets moist soil the world around is to feed caged song-birds. What is the secret of the insignificant little plant's triumphal progress? Like most immigrants that have undergone ages of selective struggle in the Old World, it successfully ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... cries and groans were occasionally heard in the village below from the shrieking shade of the guilty Eleanor, who murdered her uncle. At midnight she was said to fly from the fairies, who followed her with writhing serpents, their tongues glistening with poisonous venom and their pestiferous breath turning black everything with which they came in contact, and thus her soul was tortured as a punishment for her horrible deeds. Amongst the woods glided the pale ghosts of the Abbot Bertrand and the mother with her ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor

... planned a hundred schemes to make known my situation, but every scheme, as soon as I weighed it, I found was hopeless. Still weak from previous disease, I felt as if I should be suffocated if I remained long in this pestiferous abode, and I wept like a child. Daylight came at last, and soon afterwards the door was opened; we were admitted into the yard, and all hastened to the large tub of water, which was soon emptied. The fighting and scrambling to obtain first possession ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat

... self-respecting ornithologist will condescend to enlarge his list by counting in the English sparrow — too pestiferous to mention," writes Mr. H. E. Parkhurst, and yet of all bird neighbors is any one more within the scope of this book than the audacious little gamin that delights in the companion ship of humans even in their ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... his fallacious half-truths, his empiricism and his wanton appeals to popular ignorance, I say when this man (for I take it he was a man, and a wicked one) was passing through France he launched among the French one of his pestiferous phrases, 'Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute' and this in a rolling-in-the-mouth self-satisfied kind of a manner has been repeated since his day at least seventeen million three hundred and sixty-two thousand five hundred and four times by a great mass of Ushers, Parents, Company Officers, ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... mosquitoes couldn't pull Bully and Bawly out of bed, for the pestiferous insects weren't strong enough, they nipped the frog boys all over, until their legs and arms and faces and noses and ears smarted and burned terribly, and their mamma had to put witch hazel and ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis

... hundred per cent increase in salary, and let you have the further benefit of my services. But I want it distinctly understood by every one present," he added, as he faced around to the others, "that I wouldn't have those pestiferous Puddingham cuff-buttons as a gift! Comprenez vous cela, Mr. Hemlock Holmes of Baker Street, London, ...
— The Adventures of the Eleven Cuff-Buttons • James Francis Thierry

... have murthered her! Perfumes some creature kill: she has so long In that darke Dungeon suck't pestiferous breath, The sweete has stifled her. Take hence the body, Since me it hated it shall feele my hate: Cast her into the fire; I have lost her, And for her sake all Christians shall be lost That subjects ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... proceeded without delay to entrench himself, and immediately on running his first parallel, dispatched Antony Van Corlear to summon the fortress to surrender. Van Corlear was received with all due formality, hoodwinked at the portal, and conducted through a pestiferous smell of salt fish and onions to the citadel, a substantial hut built of pine logs. His eyes were here uncovered, and he found himself in the august presence of Governor Risingh. This chieftain, as I have before noted, was a very giantly ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... crossing-sweeper, came at night and swept the stones as his last tribute to the friend who "was very good" to him. There are three striking descriptions of this place in the novel. "A hemmed-in churchyard, pestiferous and obscene—a beastly scrap of ground which a Turk would reject as a savage abomination, and a Kafir would shudder at. With houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little tunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate—with every villainy of life ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... the city, and rendered them unfit for use. After he had been shown all this, the stranger led him into another large chamber, filled with gold and precious stones, all of which he offered him if he would kneel down and worship him, and consent to smear the doors and houses of Milan with a pestiferous salve which he held out to him. tie now knew him to be the Devil, and in that moment of temptation, prayed to God to give him strength to resist. His prayer was heard - he refused the bribe. The stranger scowled horribly upon him - a loud clap of thunder burst over his head ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... torment them, because the parents are unfamiliar with the meaning of the symptoms manifested, and therefore pay no heed to them. We have been thus particular in describing the symptoms indicating the presence of these pestiferous parasites, in order that they ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... it a high festival for the robins, for with a confidence not misplaced they followed near in the furrows that Leonard was making in the garden, and that Abram was turning on an adjacent hillside, and not only the comparatively harmless earth-worms suffered, but also the pestiferous larvae of the May-beetle, the arch-enemy of the strawberry plant. Even on that day of such varied and etherealized fragrance, the fresh, wholesome odor of the upturned earth was grateful. Suddenly Webb straightened himself from the sowing of the scale-like parsnip-seed ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... The long train wandered on under its shroud of dust, and stood still when it reached the Necropolis; then the sledge with the bier came back empty on red hot runners—but she was not one of the mourners—she was imprisoned in the pestiferous house. Then, when she was freed again—she saw it all quite clearly—two heads had been cut off in the courtyard of the Hall of justice: Orion's and Paula's—and she was left alone, quite alone and forlorn. Her mother was lying by her father's side under the sand ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... full account of my first, my last, my only real sweetheart, for I considered the professions of that pestiferous jackeroo as merely a grotesque caricature on ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin

... am not able to determine any thing on this question, I shall content myself with collecting, into one view, the several properties of this pestiferous brood, with which we are threatened, as hints to more sagacious and fortunate readers, who, when they shall find any red animal, that ranges uncontrouled over the country, and devours the labours of the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... The colonel boiled over with accounts of Beauchamp's behaviour toward his uncle, and Palmet, and Baskelett, and Mrs. Culling: how he flew at and worried everybody who seemed to him to have had a hand in the proper chastisement of that man Shrapnel. That pestiferous letter of Shrapnel's was animadverted on, of course; and, 'I should like you to have heard it, Austin,' the colonel said, 'just for you to have a notion of the kind of universal blow-up those men are scheming, and would hoist us with, if they could get a little more blasting-powder ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... sketching. She offered me a handsome sum to return for it, and bring it to her at Naples; so I went in the evening. I found it sure enough, and was about to return, when I saw a figure that seemed to emerge from the crater itself. The air was so pestiferous that I could not have conceived a human creature could breathe it and live. I was so astounded that I stood as still as a stone, till the figure came over the hot ashes and stood before me face to face. Sancta Maria, ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... watering-place is that of baneful literature. Almost every one starting off for the summer takes some reading matter. It is a book out of the library or off the bookstand, or bought of the boy hawking books through the cars. I really believe there is more pestiferous trash read among the intelligent classes in July and August than in all the other ten months of the year. Men and women who at home would not be satisfied with a book that was not really sensible, I found sitting on hotel-piazzas or ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... conceive how, under any less beneficent dispositions of their masses of hill, the continents of the earth might either have been covered with enormous lakes, as parts of North America actually are covered; or have become wildernesses of pestiferous marsh; or lifeless plains, upon which the water would have dried as it fell, leaving them for great part of the year desert. Such districts do exist, and exist in vastness; the whole earth is not prepared for the habitation of ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... had not retired when the legislature did. Editors nowadays were often surprised in their sanctums by committees of three from some pestiferous unwomanly club or other, and they had not come, alackaday, to have their handkerchiefs picked up with courtly speeches, graced with an apt quotation from "Maud." The Civic Improvement League, with a woman president, was taking a continuous interest in matters of playgrounds ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... Thinke not, although in Writing I preferr'd The manner of thy vile outragious Crymes, That therefore I haue forg'd, or am not able Verbatim to rehearse the Methode of my Penne. No Prelate, such is thy audacious wickednesse, Thy lewd, pestiferous, and dissentious prancks, As very Infants prattle of thy pride. Thou art a most pernitious Vsurer, Froward by nature, Enemie to Peace, Lasciuious, wanton, more then well beseemes A man of thy Profession, and Degree. And ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... Manchester, and similar establishments in other large towns of Britain. What can be a more delightful relaxation to a Lancashire Mechanic than an hour or two in a Garden: what an escape from the pestiferous politics of the times. At Birmingham too, there is a Public Garden, similar to that at Manchester, where we hope the Artisan may enjoy a sight at least of nature's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various

... Brewster stood in the bunkhouse doorway, his wrath at the pestiferous Hicks forgotten, in his rapture at the glorious dawn, he saw something that showed why his dreams had been of the wild West! The expression of indignation, however, yielded to one of humorous affection, as he gazed ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice

... trunks, and vines thickly blanketed the rocks and ledges between which dashed sparkling waterfalls in haste to join the Skagway below. It mattered not if the hot noonday sun at times entered these fastnesses; it served only to cheer the hearts of little birds and animals, and bring to pestiferous life millions of mosquitoes and flies to torment both day and night the unfortunate toilers on ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan

... hard-bitten, and his supply of conventional small talk was practically non-existent. To get the best out of Hank, as has been said, you had to let him take his coat off and put his feet up on the back of a second chair and reconcile yourself to the pestiferous brand ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... form, As light as a gossamer borne on the storm, Celestial terror sat throned in his gaze, Like the midnight pestiferous meteor's blaze.— ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... to illustrate the teeming life of the African jungle. Also the head of a boa constrictor. Likewise the tail of one. Here we come to a change of scene. Mark how wonderfully a few strokes of dark-green paint, put on by the hand of genius, impart the idea of a pestiferous swamp. That odd-looking object, like a rock, is the head of a hippopotamus. A few feet beyond, you notice two things like the stumps of aquatic weeds. Those are the tails of two hippopotamuses engaged in deadly strife at the bottom of the swamp. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... execrations was still discharging convulsive yelps at the retreating vehicle, "I'd give a five-dollar note to git one good lick at him. I'd make him holler 'pen-an'-ink' once! Why anybody's willin' to have such a dum'd, wuthless, pestiferous varmint as that 'round 's more 'n I c'n understand. I'll bet that the days they churn, that critter, unless they ketch him an' tie him up the night before, 'll be under the barn all day, an' he's jest blowed off steam enough to run a dog ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott

... heard his voice he said: "Good morning, Flexen. A young fellow of the name of William Roper will be calling on you this morning. I expect you know all he has to say already. But do you see anything to be gained by his making a pestiferous, ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson

... kindliness, as the natural and necessary result of the overthrow of all civil government and religious belief. It appears, still more wonderfully, that he contemplates this state of things as the ideal SUMMUM BONUM. In short, it is quite impossible that there should exist a more pestiferous mixture of blasphemy, sedition, and sensuality, than is visible in the whole structure and strain of this poem—which, nevertheless, and notwithstanding all the detestation its principles excite, must and will be ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... '80 had been a season of disgust and disappointment to us for not only had the pestiferous mites devoured the grain, they had filled our stables, granaries, and even our kitchens with their ill-smelling crawling bodies—and now they were coming again in added billions. By the middle of June ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... themselves, superior to "first-water" stones. At the slightest agitation all the accumulated ooze and filth of generations—rags and decomposing frogs and things unmentionable—rise to the surface in turbid clouds. The element wells out hot, from under the neighbouring Kasbah, with a pestiferous mineral aroma. ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas

... been published the year before, and tongues were wagging. Darwin was not present; but Huxley, who was known to be a personal friend of Darwin, was in his seat. The intent of the chairman was to keep Darwin and his pestiferous book out of all the discussions: Darwin was a good ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... writhed through the hours, while Barry slumbered peacefully and breathed in new strength. Little was aware of a subtle drone and hum all around the place; he placed it to the further credit of pestiferous insects and cursed them dully. From the river crept in a rank odor of musk and mud that mingled with the sleepy sounds to lull him, yet his brain refused to rest. He sweat and twisted in the depths of ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... for you would not only rob the farmer of his cattle and the shepherd of his livelihood but you would even break the law of the land in which it is written that a farmer may not graze a young orchard with that pestiferous animal which astrology has placed in the ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato

... even as those who sing upon the stage. They are as usefully employed as if they worked from dawn to dark in the innumerable servile, degrading, unseemly, unmanly, and often most unwholesome and pestiferous occupations to which by the social economy so many wretches are inevitably doomed. If it were not generally pernicious to disturb the natural course of things, and to impede in any degree the great wheel of circulation which is turned by the strangely directed labor of these unhappy people, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... rooted, and easily treated by simple dislodgment. A hot, windy day is a good time to hoe between your plants, because the wind and sun kill the uprooted weeds in a short time. They dry up, and there is but little to remove. On a damp cloudy day if a disturbed bit—no matter how small—of the pestiferous couch grass rolls near the base of a plant and remains there, it will send down its roots among those of the plant, and it is almost impossible to get them out without taking ...
— Making a Garden of Perennials • W. C. Egan

... specialty of bank work and from the number of forgers apprehended and convicted know just how the work is done. A careful reading of this chapter will put bankers and the public on their guard against the most pestiferous rascals they ...
— Disputed Handwriting • Jerome B. Lavay

... The pestiferous skunk is universal; and there are two quaint-looking weasels, intensely black in colour, and grey on the back and flat crown. One, the Galictis barbara, is a large bold animal that hunts in companies; ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson

... name that corresponds with my nature and constitution. Patriotism is the strongest passion; and I glory in being a Yankee.—A Yankee is any man born in New-England—and New-England contains the three northern States, and a certain little, pestiferous, pseudo Island. My countrymen generally have the credit of being a good-natured, psalm-singing, religious kind of men, very honest, but plaguy hard in their dealings—insomuch that a Carolinian or a Georgian frequently swear that the very Satan himself could ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... little faith in physicians, laughed, and exclaimed, "But, my dear sir, when you see so many men alive in England at this instant, why should you believe in the impossibility of your living even in this pestiferous country?" ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth

... the Seer, And prompt acceptance of his costly gifts. But Agamemnon might not so be pleased, Who gave him rude dismission; he in wrath 470 Returning, prayed, whose prayer Apollo heard, For much he loved him. A pestiferous shaft He instant shot into the Grecian host, And heap'd the people died. His arrows swept The whole wide camp of Greece, 'till at the last 475 A Seer, by Phoebus taught, explain'd the cause. I first ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... pestiferous chilluns!" exclaimed the colored man, trying to mop up the flood. "And dem cups was near 'nough to las' ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope

... to my poor judgment," replied the Palmer. "No one is bound to faith with those who mean to observe none with him. Anticipate this treachery of your uncle, and let his now short and infirm existence moulder out in the pestiferous cell to which he would condemn your youthful strength. The royal grant has assigned you lands enough for your honourable support; and wherefore not unite with them those of the Garde Doloureuse?— Eveline Berenger, if I do not greatly ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... pore Jim had a heap of good citizen in him, before that pestiferous cattle outfit druv' his sheep over the cliff. Relations 'twixt sheep and cattle men in this yere country is strained beyant the goin'-back place, I can tell you. My pistol-eye 'ain't had a wink of sleep for nigh on eighteen months, an' is broke to wakefulness same ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning



Words linked to "Pestiferous" :   disagreeable, septic, infected, evil, epidemic



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